Sixteen EU capitals miss AI enforcement deadline ahead of Dublin summit

Sixteen EU member states have missed the August 2025 deadline to appoint a national authority to enforce the bloc's Artificial Intelligence Act, according to the European Commission, as the 27 heads of government prepare to meet in Dublin on Friday to project collective urgency on artificial intelligence.

Six countries — Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary — have not selected an authority at all. Ten further capitals have made only a provisional decision that still requires formal adoption, the Commission confirmed.

The compliance gap has drawn a sharp public rebuke from European Parliament lawmaker Sergey Lagodinsky, a German member of the Greens, who has written to the Commission asking it to open a formal infringement procedure against non-compliant member states. "Stop blaming the EU for missing the race if you miss your own deadlines," he said. "Europe's AI ambitions cannot be delivered if national capitals cannot get their act together."

Beyond enforcement, the EU's infrastructure programme has also slipped. The department running a €30 billion project to build seven AI compute hubs across Europe announced at the end of October that it was extending the deadline for consortia to submit expressions of interest, citing the need for member states to complete national budgetary processes and submit financial commitments. It is the second consecutive delay: an initial November deadline had already moved to February.

Jan Kavalírek, formerly the Czech government's AI envoy and involved in the Czech bid, posted on LinkedIn: "Apparently, some paperwork wasn't submitted on time." He told journalists that "it's essential that we keep some timeline and conditions" that were presented at the beginning, stressing the importance of maintaining those initial parameters.

European Council President António Costa framed the Dublin meeting around reducing European dependence on the United States and China for core AI technology. Safety has also risen up the agenda following a series of incidents involving rogue AI agents over summer and more recent cyberattacks.